Thursday, May 18, 2006

Could it be that Emirates, sponsor of the new of Arsenal's Ashburton Grove Stadium, had been planning something of a nice big congratulatory ad campaign this morning for the beaten Gooners?

It's one explanation for the pages of ads it ran this morning in The Times, Independent, Guardian and Daily Telegraph... proclaiming that it has ordered 45 Airbus 380s.

The ad ran over four pages in The Times, with copy drawing attention to the fact that the A380 lands at Heathrow today for the first time.

Noteworthy surely, but surely there's more mileage if you've spent £100m sponsoring Arsenal's flashy new stadium and they had looked set to beat Barcelona in Paris last night to win Europe's biggest trophy. Emirates had already ran goodluck ads.

Sadly, reality got in the way and disaster struck after Jens Lehmann was red carded just minutes in leaving a 10-man Gunners to crash heroically to a 2-1 defeat and leaving Emirates media agency MediaCom with a quick ad change.